United States or Croatia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Soon after I got out of bed our host and my master, the Villicus, came with a light and three or four slaves. The light revealed One of my fellow-slaves flat on his back and another throttling him. A dagger lay on the floor. Evidently the one had saved me from the other. Late next afternoon, far up in the hills near Helvillum, I caught and caged the last hyena.
Go in and try what you boast you can do. Show us." "Point out your stallion," I suggested. He indicated a beautiful bay with a white face. He let me approach him at my first attempt, let me take him by the nose, let me lead him close to my dumbfounded audience, let me mount him. I rode him about, turning him to right or left as the Villicus ordered, at my suggestion.
"I am almost ready to feel that he might even tame Selinus." Off we trooped to the stable of the choice breeding-stallions. There, in a darkened box-stall, I was shown a beautiful demon of a horse, four years old, a sorrel, with a white face and white forefeet. He certainly looked wicked enough. "Will you try him?" the Villicus asked me. "Of course," I said.
These, being smaller and more cowardly than the nobler animals, were harder to locate. It was after sunset when we reached the villa where we found the procurator in charge of the beast-train; and along with, him and his men were welcomed and entertained. After our bath and a lavish dinner the Villicus exchanged a few whispered words with our host and then he and I had a long conference alone.
At every piece of bad news I need a bracer." After she had emptied her glass, she burst out: "If Almo is acting as villicus of an estate near Fregellae he must be living with some slave-woman or other." "He is not," Vocco informed her. "I made careful inquiries on just that point and got my information from two different sources.
"Did anybody ever hear the like!" exclaimed Brinnaria. Vocco's agents verified this news and made it quite certain that Almo was masquerading as a slave and as a villicus of a fine estate in lower Latium, near Fregellae, southeast of Rome on the Latin highroad, about half way between Capua and the capital.
"Hand me that rope!" the Villicus ordered a teamster. He knotted a hangman's noose at one end of the rope, tried it to make sure it worked properly and ordered the estate slaves to hang the body to a convenient limb of a near by tree. They did. I stood, gazing questioningly, first at the swinging corpse, then at the Villicus. "Felix," said he, "I perceive that you do not understand.
Still more was I curious as to why these hordes of animals from the south should be traversing Italy from the north. I asked questions and could get no satisfaction from the natives of the district: slaves, peasants, yeomen, proprietors, overseers, Villicus and all, they one and all knew nothing. If they claimed to know, what they alleged merely emphasized their ignorance.
It'll take about ten days to get ready. Meanwhile you can take out another bunch of heifers with new calves. It seems to suit you and the calves and the heifers." When I returned from my third outing, hard and fit and happy, the Villicus asked me how soon I would be ready for colt-breaking. "Tomorrow," I said.
"Let him out into the yard or the paddock." Into the paddock he was let out, by means of a door in his stall worked by winches from above. In the afternoon sunlight he pranced and curvetted about, a joy to see. "Let me show Felix what he is like," one of the younger horse-wranglers suggested. "You can," the Villicus agreed. "We all know how agile you are and how quick at vaulting a fence."
Word Of The Day